With the recent advent of mobile video displays, and their expected proliferation, there is an acute need to display video on a smaller display than originally intended. Two main issues need to be confronted. The first is the need to change the aspect ratio of a video. The second is the need to down-sample the video whilst maintaining enough resolution of objects-of-interest. An example of the first challenge is the display of wide screen movies on a 4:3 TV screen. Displaying a ball game on a cellular screen is a good example for the need of a smart down-sampling technique, where the ball needs to remain large enough to be easily seen on screen.
The current industry solutions are basic and not very effective. They include: blunt aspect ratio free resizing; cropping the middle of the video; resizing while preserving the aspect ratio by adding black stripes above and below the frame; and keeping the middle of the frame untouched while warping the sides. In fact, it is common nowadays to have printed lines on movie-cameras' screens that mark the region that will be visible in the frame after it would be cropped to the aspect ratio of a regular 4:3 TV screen.
There is a growing need to provide effective devices and method for image transformation.